Rotary cutting apparatus for cutting individual blanks from a web of material such as a web of cardboard, these individual blanks being adapted for ulteriorly forming packagings, for example, are currently used in industry. After the cutting of these individual blanks, there always remain scraps or rejects of cardboard which correspond to the zones of the web which are not used for forming the individual blanks. These cardboard scraps must be eliminated from the surface of the cutting cylinder after each cutting operation. To this effect, piercing points or spockets are carried by the surface of the cylinder in positions where the scraps are formed after cutting. Each bit of cardboard which forms a scrap is thus pierced by a piercing point and is carried, while being maintained on this piercing point, towards a clearing device adapted for relieving, from each point, the bit of cardboard carried by this piercing point.
The clearing devices currently known include generally a comb-shaped unitary member having teeth directed toward the surface of the cutting cylinder and inclined according to an appropriate angle with respect to this surface. Such a unitary clearing comb is positioned so that the various piercing points carried by the cutting cylinder will pass in intervals between teeth of the comb. Therefore the cardboard scraps carried by the outer extreme end portions of the piercing points are detached progressively from these piercing points by sliding on the neighboring teeth of the unitary clearing comb. A clearing device of this type has however a disadvantage in that there is often a jamming of cardboard bits in the bottom of the intervals between the teeth of the clearing comb, and these cardboard bits can accumulate together and will eventually cause a breaking of the piercing points when an obstacle, which is progressively formed by the carboard bits, is sufficiently important.